


WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW...

by Mooncatx



Category: Jem and the Holograms (Cartoon)
Genre: Drama, Gun Violence, Minx is a hellcat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 12:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19084996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooncatx/pseuds/Mooncatx
Summary: A fan fic inspired by events and characters in the Jem Star role playing game. Plotted by Steve Requin, with finishing touches by Mooncat. Based on projected events that MIGHT have happened in the future of the game.  Scoop, a tabloid reporter, has been ruined by Jem.  With nothing left to lose, he'll have his revenge on the rock star, no matter how many people he has to hurt... or kill.





	WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW...

 

 

 

**WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW...**

**By Steve "Scoop" Requin and Mooncat**

 

**Prologue:**

**The door of the office slammed shut, nearly hitting the man standing just outside it in the nose. Still stunned by the thin sheet of paper in his hands, he didn't even notice. He was numb inside. Like one of those damn hollow chocolate Easter rabbits, empty in the middle. It wasn't his fault. It hadn't f*cking been his fault! But there he was, 30 years old with nothing to show for all the hard work and sweat he'd put into his career. Ruined. Because of her... Slowly the emptiness inside him was replaced, filled... with sick, bitter rage. He'd show them. He'd show them all! Most of all, he'd show that bitch she couldn't f*ck up his life and get away with it.**

 

*****************

 

**Rio glanced at the cover of Star Secrets he'd picked up on the way to the party. He usually didn't bother with this kind of tabloid trash, but today's issue contained the full front page retraction and apology Starlight's lawyers had beaten out of the newspaper's management, along with a hefty multi-million settlement. He'd arrived at the party only 15 minutes ago and he was already fed up with it. The 21st annual Elvis Award Gala was over and the Holograms as well as the Stingers and Stryke all had their fair share of awards for the sales of their albums. Even the Misfits received one for their latest album called "Near Death Experience".**

**The after-gala party given by Starlight Music was going gang busters. Everyone was having fun. Already cliques of people gathered together to talk while others raided the small buffet spread laid out by one of the many terrace gardens. Lindsey was there with her VTV camera crew, asking people their impression about the gala, grabbing a sound bite here, getting vid footage there-- and catching those prized "photo opportunities" with the award winners. Kimber and Stormer were laughing together in a corner, heads close as they talked. Giggling together like best friends. The other Misfits weren't invited, but Rio knew that their absence was too good a thing to last. They'd find a way to sneak in and cause a scene. They always did.**

**Jem and Riot seemed cozy together. Too cozy for Rio's peace of mind. She was hanging on Riot's arm like they were on a bloody honeymoon. She seemed so glad to be with him. Rio could see on Riot's face how proud he was to be with the one he saw as the most perfect specimen of womanhood alive. They looked happy together, like they were in love.**

**Rio gritted his teeth. Crumpling up the scandal rag in his hands, he tossed it into a nearby trash bag. He couldn't take it anymore, he had to get away.**

********************

**Minx walked through the growing crowd searching for Rio. She'd seen him only minutes ago, looking thunder clouds at Jem and Riot. She'd stopped to grab a couple of wine flutes, and a bottle of champagne. Maybe they could drown their misery together. She knew he couldn't stand to see Jem being so infatuated with Riot. The dark corner of the ballroom she'd seen him brooding in was empty.**

**Just great, Minx thought. For this I gave up my time on the firing range. The Mauser in her hidden side holster was an unaccustomed weight that dragged at her, and reminded her of the hundred dollar an hour session she'd blown off. Just to make the after gala party at Riot's request. She'd meant to head to Valhalla's Hall as soon as she could get away from the awards ceremony, but Riot had dragged her and Rapture with him to Jem's little soiree. She didn't even have time to run home and drop off her gun.**

**Vainly, she eyed the crowd, trying for a glimpse of the man who's pain she'd felt so keenly. Watching him watch Jem and Riot with the eyes of an abandoned puppy had touched her usually guarded heart. It had been so cute and yet... so sad. She knew how he hurt, and thought that maybe... just maybe... if he let her, she could help him feel better.**

**But getting the glasses for the champagne had delayed her just long enough for him to vanish completely. Finally Minx approached Jem and Riot, calling out to them through the heavy press of people.**

**"Excuse me, has anyone seen Rio!?"**

**Suddenly, the main doors of the ballroom swung open with a vengeance, violently slamming into the walls on each side of the doorway.**

**"HE'S RIGHT HERE, LADY!"**

**With shocked surprise on everyone's face, the crowd turned to stare at the main entrance. Standing there was none other than the notorious Scoop Salkowski, the most hated tabloid reporter on the West Coast. The man who at one time or other, had made every rock music star's life a very special hell. He staggered into the room, holding a limp and unconscious Rio across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. He stopped and let Rio drop to the ground with a sickening thump.**

**The champagne and glass flutes dropped unnoticed from Minx's hands, as she ran towards Rio's frighteningly still form.**

**"Mein Gott! RIO!"**

**Jem abandoned her shocked grip on Riot's arm, and raced towards Rio as well, but Minx was there well before her. Dropping to her knees beside Rio, Minx tried to bring him around, holding his head with one hand, patting him gently but with growing firmness on the cheek with the other. The worry in her eyes grew...**

**"Rio! Rio! Please, say something! Talk to me! Rio pleeeeeeease!"**

**Jem turned away from the sight of Rio's unresponsive body cradled against Minx. Her voice raw with worry, rose above the crowd's buzzing din, to shout at the one responsible for the crisis at hand.**

**"What have you done to him? How did you get in here?"**

**"Relax babe, he was just my ticket to your little party here. When I saw him in the parking lot, I sneaked behind him and gave him a good hit on the head with my camera. That guy really has a thick skull. I had to hit him four times before he finally passed out. It broke my camera too."**

**Scoop paused briefly, as a moment's regret flitted across his face, but it passed quickly to be replaced by bitter rage, "But that's ok since I can't use it anymore to make a living, thanks to you. To get in here, all I had to do is tell the guy at the door that Mister Lavender-hair here was too drunk to drive and that I was taking him back to his friends. He knew your boy toy by sight, so he let me in."**

**Meanwhile, Minx, had gently stroked her fingers through Rio's hair. Suddenly she froze, something warm, wet and sticky welled against her touch. Raising her hand to the light, Minx examined her fingertips with mounting horror. They were covered with blood.**

**"You've hurt him! You've hurt my Rio!"**

**Like a raging tigress, Minx leapt at Scoops throat. Fury turned her voice to a blood thirsty growl.**

**"You bastard! I'll kill you!"**

**The suddenness of the attack caught Scoop by surprise. Grabbing him by the collar of his trench coat, Minx's momentum slammed him into the wall. Her intent to strangle the life from him was burning in her eyes.**

**"Get off me, you Nazi bitch!" Scoop snarled at the blonde fury, trying to push her away.**

**The crowd stood by, watching the fierce battle played out before them, too shocked to react.**

**Scoop desperately tried to break Minx's berserker grip, but she held on despite his violent struggles. Consumed with the need to choke the vileness from Scoop's breathless body, Minx was vengeance that would not be denied. With an almost feral savagery, Minx hit, scratched, ripped at his flesh and tore at his hair. They struggled together with such violence, they quickly lost balance, and both crashed into a buffet table. The violent shock of their combined weight broke the table in two, sending canapé and tiny sandwiches flying all over. Minx landed under Scoop, taking the full shock of the fall.**

**In her stunned agony Minx lost her grip on Scoop. Seizing the opportunity, Scoop punched Minx, smashing her pretty face as hard as he could with his fist. She lay still, and limp in the middle of the broken table, unconscious. Scoop's eyes caught the glint of something metallic poking out of the inside of her jacket.**

**"Hello, what's this ?"**

**Riot finally snapped out of his surprised daze.**

**"MINX!"**

**Cursing himself for not reacting sooner, Riot ran at Scoop, silently swearing to make him pay for what he did to Minx, to Jem, to Rapture and to everyone in the music industry that the man had ever written lies about. Seeing the muscular Riot charge him, Scoop grabbed the metallic object... Minx's Mauser. He turned around and aimed at Riot.**

**"FREEZE, SUCKER!"**

**Surprised, Riot skidded to a sudden stop.**

**"Back off, you oversized pansy! All of you! " Scoop panted, his voice hoarse with triumph.**

**He waved the gun at the encroaching crowd, who froze in place, "All of you just back off!"**

**Scoop could feel the power of the gun in his hands. As he slowly walked forward, the crowd fell away from him. Every eye was on the weapon in the mad man's hands.**

**"So, you think you could ruin my life and get away with it, eh?" Scoop sneered at the people cowering before him.**

**To the side of the room, a revolted Stormer tried desperately not to retch. She didn't want to bring the crazed man's attention to herself. Or more importantly, to Kimber who clung to the sky tressed Misfit in shared fright. But the words of outrage left her lips before she could stop them.**

**"Ruin YOUR life? The nerve! It is YOU who..."**

**"SHUT UP, BITCH! You will listen to me !" Scoop cut off Stormer protest, and gained a perverse thrill to see her shrink back from his fevered gaze.**

**Meanwhile, Rio slowly surfaced from his forced unconsciousness. His head splitting with nauseating pain, he found himself on the floor of the ballroom, in the middle of a nightmare. Scoop looked over the crowd, his eyes bright with the desperation of a man with nothing left to lose. All the frustration he'd ever felt towards these people combined into an almost physical force, pushing him past the bounds of sanity.**

**Gesturing with his free hand, Scoop pointed at Lindsey.**

**"You see this? You see this big shot reporter, that journalist loved by stars and public alike? That news person who always gets interviews with whoever she wants, whenever she wants, and who always gets the exclusives?" Scoop's voice carried his contempt across the room.**

**"That could have been me. That SHOULD have been me! All my life I tried to make it to the top, the place I rightfully deserve for all my skills. All my life my efforts were ruined by you damn rock stars!" Scoop shouted his accusations, as he walked slowly across the room.**

**The crowd melted away under the menace of his gun.**

**"Thanks to you all, I am now out of a job. The way you reacted to the last edition of Stars Secrets, they have to close down. Now, everyone in the newspaper and magazine industry sees me as the guy whose stories caused the fall of Star Secrets. Now, no papers, no magazines wants me to work for them." Scoops voice had gotten softer, but it still carried clearly through room that was silent save for muffled sobbing in the background.**

**Knowing he had their undivided attention, Scoop let his voice rise once more, "Yeah, thanks to you I will never be able to work as a reporter ever again. You have ruined my life, all of you, but no one is more responsible than you, Miss Jem!"**

**Startled, Jem protested, "Me ? But..."**

**"SHUT UP ! I owe you the most important problems I've had in my career, for they were all related to you. First that psycho who came to me, saying she was your mother, telling me all those lies about you. And when I ran her story, did you do anything to her ? Nooooooo... You took it all on me, me whose biggest crime was to trust that woman. Because of that, I couldn't get any work except for shitty tabloids. No serious newspaper wanted to trust me after you refuted my story as lies."**

**"I understand," Jem said softly, trying to reason with the ranting man, "but I couldn't let you spread around those lies about me."**

**"What else is there to spread around since you work so hard on hiding the truth from everyone!? What's the idea of having a secret identity anyway? When you choose a career that will make you a public figure, you know people will want to know everything about you, it's part of the game." Scoops spat back, unsatisfied.**

**He continued, voice heavy with derision, "It's the price everyone have to pay for celebrity. But you, little precious miss Jem or whatever your real name is, you thought you could play by your own rule. You wanted to be the big adulated rock star and still keep your own little private life to yourself."**

**"As long as they buy your records, tickets to your shows, your posters, that's fine with you, but you have no scruples of depriving them of what they really want in exchange: information about you. If you didn't shroud yourself with such mystery, no one would want to know so much about your past and that never would have happened to me." Scoops began to pace the floor as he spoke.**

**During Scoops monologue, Lindsay sent a discreet signal to her camera man. He nodded slightly in response. Scoop kept on talking.**

**"And that night, months later, when I happened to be in that restaurant where you threw a fit. How I thanked God for giving me the chance to be there and the opportunity to take pictures of it." Scoop went on, recalling the time Clash had impersonated Jem, "But you ruined it ! You grabbed my camera and threw it through a window. Not only did you break my camera and exposed the film, guess who had to pay for the window ? Not the precious popular rock star Jem, of course not. Since it was MY camera who broke it, the owner of the place made ME pay for it."**

**"But that wasn't even me, it was someone posing as me to ruin my reputation." Jem tried to explain, "And you can't hold me responsible if the owner made you pay instead of me... I mean her."**

**Far from cooling him down, Jem's explanation just served to make him madder.**

**"Yeah, that's just fine, isn't it! It's not your fault, never is, never was! Whatever happens to me, even though you're always linked to it, you're just as innocent as a newborn." Sarcasm dripped from Scoops every word, "And I guess the letter you sent me about marrying Riot was also written by your evil long lost twin sister, wasn't it? For that letter was just the beginning of the end for me!"**

**"I..." Jem could feel the stinging nettles of guilt... How could she explain that the wedding announcement had been the result of a series of outrageous events that seemed to plague her life?**

**"SHUT UP, JUST SHUT UP!" Scoops shouted at Jem, not caring to hear her excuses... his volume deafening her.**

**This was more than Riot could take. Seeing that madman talk to Jem that way made his blood boil. He spoke to Scoop with a quiet fury in his voice.**

**"You will not talk to her like that. Now give me the gun and apologize to her this instant. I said NOW !"**

**For years now Scoop had dreamed of the day he would get the narcissist blonde demi-god a lesson in humility. The time seems to have come at last.**

**"You want the gun, blondie? Just try to come and get it. I will make a nice little hole in your oh-so-pretty and perfect face."**

**Fire flashing in his eyes, Riot took a step toward Scoop, but Rapture came out of the crowd to hold him back. Fearfully she clung to his arm, and begged him to stop. Even filled with rage, Riot wasn't stupid enough to ignore reason. He halted, while Scoop continued to rant.**

**"You all think you are so superior, don't you? Everything is so easy for you. All you have to do is make a song and you've got it all. Fame, fortune, love, respect and the blind adoration of stupid punk kids who act like you're gods or sumpthin'..."**

**Once more he turned his attention to Jem.**

**"Talking about you could have meant the beginning of a great career for me. Instead, you were the cause of my downfall."**

**He raised his gun and pointed it at Jem.**

**"Well, there's more than one way to make headlines. I have a story with you in it tonight, a story that will be printed in each and every newspaper around the globe tomorrow morning. My only regret is that I will not be allowed to write it myself." Scoops voice was quiet now, tired, "Since it's your fault I've become a nobody, it's only fair that you make the whole world remember the name of Scoop Salkowski just the way they remember the name of Mark Chapman."**

**Scoop squeezed the trigger of the Mauser. For most of the witnesses, the adrenaline rush made their brains work so fast that everything seemed to happen in slow motion.**

**Being awake long enough to have heard most of Scoop's story, Rio lunged forward, screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"**

**Throwing himself in front of Jem, Rio was ready to protect her with his very life. Using his body as a shield, he offered it to the deadly bullets. Scoop didn't care if he had to shoot a dozen like him first to get to Jem. His finger closed on the trigger, pressing all the way down.**

**> Click!<**

**"What the...!?"**

**Scoop pressed the trigger a second time, a third time, a fourth time.**

**> Click!<**

**> Click!<**

**> Click!<**

**For about a split second he stood there in shock, not able to understand what was happening. Minx voice behind him brought him back to reality.**

**"Looking for these, bright boy?"**

**The battered Stinger was up and conscious. From one of her pockets, Minx took out the Mauser's ammo and held it up for Scoop to see.**

**"You didn't think I was stupid enough to carry around a loaded gun, did you?"**

**Scoop looked at the ammo. His head swiveled back to Jem and the rest of the crowd. He had lost... Slowly his arms came down. His grip on the useless gun relaxed and it hits the ground with a clatter.**

**As if it were a signal, the crowd sighed in relief. At that moment, Scoop knew he had lost it all. Before he came to the party, he'd already lost a lot. But he had still had his freedom. He still had the opportunity to try to do something else with his life. He had exchanged it all for a chance at vengeance, and now he'd even lost that.**

**Comprehension hit him like a ton of bricks. The mess he dragged his life into was of his own making. Tears of rage and desperation tracked his cheeks... And he gave a final despairing howl...**

**"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL!"**

**Falling to his knees, his rage spent, the man he had been was gone. Now only pain and suffering was left.**

**In spite of the fact that he'd attempted to murder her, Jem could not bring herself to hate him. Watching, she couldn't help but feel pity for that broken man before her... but there's nothing she could do for him. Nothing.**

**Police sirens sounded in the distance, coming closer with each second.**

**"The police are here?" asked a surprised Kimber. "But how could they know?"**

**"Simple." Lindsey told the dazed and confused Hologram.**

**The energetic video DJ explained how she'd discreetly asked her cameraman to continue filming everything. The images had been sent out live to VTV in hopes that their staff would understand what was going on and immediately notify the police. And apparently they did.**

**Jem and Rio exchanged a long look... Riot, seeing that they were lost to anyone but each other, turned his attentions to Minx. His hand caressed her face, as if to soothe away the bruises beginning to mark her delicate skin. She collapsed into his arms, weeping. Riot held her close, whispering things into her silken blonde hair. His breath was warm against Minx's ear. It didn't matter what he was saying, as long as he held on to her and didn't let go.**

**Rio and Jem didn't notice the Stingers' tender scene. There might have been no one in their world but each other.**

**"Rio... I thought you were mad at me, and yet you were ready to protect my life with yours." Jem whispered, her voice ragged with emotion.**

**"Shhhh... Everything will be all right now." Rio said as he drew her near.**

**"All right? Yes, for you, for me, for everyone here except for that poor man..." Jem said as she leaned against Rio, enclosed in his comforting arms.**

**"Poor man? You are talking about the maniac who was ready to kill you and me both, right?"**

**"Yes, I know but... I can't help feeling somehow responsible. It' s not easy to live with the idea... With the fact that my very existence can cause someone so much grief, that it can ruin his whole life. It's hard to know that no matter how you act there will always be some sort of consequences. That someone can be hurt, and you might never even know about it."**

**"It's possible, but who can say for sure? And you know what they say, 'What you don't know can't hurt you' " Rio argued, unable to comprehend Jem's reasoning, but trying to comfort her.**

**Jem looked up at him, blinking away tears...**

**"That's just the problem, Rio... Now, I know."**

 

**~fini~**


End file.
